S MAGAZINE ★ 26 MAY 2019 57
INTERVIEW
neck on the line and said, ‘We
missed out on Depeche Mode,
we’re not going to miss out on
Howard Jones.’ So I signed with
Warner Bros. The first single was
number three and the album was
number one.
My wife Jan and I met Paul and
Linda McCartney again at a Prince’s
Trust concert a couple of years
after Live Aid and had much more
time with them. Paul gave me their
home phone number and said,
come and visit. But it was a case of
being too starstruck and I couldn’t
do it. I really should have.”Howard’s album Transform is out
now. He is on his 35th anniversary
tour in the UK until Saturday.rock’n’roll. It sounded incredible
and I made up my mind that I was
going to be a keyboard player who
was the frontman of a band. I got
my first keyboard, a Hohner pianet,
with earnings from my Saturday
job in a high-street shop. I kept
getting better keyboards when
I could afford them. I wanted to
use the technology of my time.
By 1982, I’d been playing my
one-man electronic show anywhere
I could. I ended up doing Mondays
at the Marquee Club in London,
where all the record company reps
came. Nobody wanted to sign this
guy with the keyboards and drum
machines. But one guy did get it- Paul Conroy. And that was the
breakthrough moment. He put his
was David Bowie.
Although we didn’t
get to do it to the
whole audience
because they ran
out of time, it meant
a lot to me having
that audience of two.
I met Bowie
backstage when I was
passing the bar. This
gentleman turned and
said hello. He said he’d
heard I was doing well
in America. I almost
fell over that he knew
who I was. I’ll always
treasure that moment.
The song I did get
to play was my solo
piece at the piano,
Hide And Seek. It was
a shock to a lot of
people that I was
playing the piano
because I was known
as a synth kid. But
it showed that I was a real
musician. It’s songwriting that is
key for me. If you took away the
synths, there’s still a stand-alone
song there. I got to the chorus
and the whole of Wembley started
singing along. That moment is one
of the best musical experiences of
my life. Just sublime.
I’d started playing piano when
I was seven, then I studied piano
at the Royal Northern College of
Music. Music was the only thing
I was passionate about, whether
I was going to make a living from
it or not. When I was 14, I’d gone
to the Isle of Wight festival and
seen Emerson, Lake & Palmer
with a huge Moog modular set-up
that nobody had done before inCAROL DRINKWATER / ALAMYMy favourite photograph
by musician Howard Jones
The synth-pop star, 64, remembers playing Live Aid in 1985 and meeting
his heroes Paul McCartney and David Bowie Words by Caroline Rees
“THIS was
taken
backstage
at Live Aid in
1985 by Linda
McCartney.
Paul has been
a hero since
I was a tiny
boy listening to the Beatles on
the radio and it was the first time
we met. I don’t have many musical
heroes. Paul McCartney and
David Bowie were the two really;
McCartney with his songwriting and
Bowie with his attitude not to be
afraid to be who you are.
Everyone was lining up to have
their photograph taken by David
Bailey and I met Paul and Linda
in the queue. I’m a vegetarian, a
subject that was close to them, so
we had a conversation about what
to feed your dog.
Live Aid was a massive deal.
There were 1.5 billion people
watching and I’m so proud that
I was part of it. I had missed out
on the Band Aid single, partly
because I wasn’t pushy enough to
put myself forward. So, as soon as
I heard about Live Aid, I got people
to get in contact with Bob Geldof.
His criterion was that you had to
have sold a million albums within
the past six months. Fortunately,
I had, with Dream Into Action.
I was on tour with the band
in America at the time but I flew
back. We planned to do two
songs. One was an a cappella
version of Life In One Day with
my backing vocalists, Afrodiziak.
We were rehearsing it out on the
grass and two people came out of
their dressing room to hear. One
was Pete Townshend and the other●S